Surviving Beale Street Music Festival takes some planning

Diehard fan knows rain always around corner

Ashley Blackard reaches through a fence to take a picture of the Mississippi River during the Beale Street Music Festival.

John Robilio

For more than 10 years, John Robilio and his wife, Shawna, hosted a huge party at their house during the Memphis in May Beale Street Music Festival. They live, conveniently, just a short walk up the bluff from Tom Lee Park.

The ritual required weeks of preparation. They'd special order custom beer Koozies to hand out to guests. A friend would fly in from New York. They'd unpack their concert wardrobe -- knee-high rubber boots, water-resistant pants -- for whenever they felt like listening to music in a thunderstorm.

"I've probably got more money in foul-weather gear than anything else," Robilio said. "I still laugh at the kids who wear flip-flops. There's no fashion statement to be made."

Like most die-hard attendees, "Robo" learned how to survive the festival. Then, last year, he learned how the festival survives Mother Nature.

Briefly unemployed, he took a temporary job with Memphis in May and became "the guy that ran the hardware store" for the event. After a month of near around-the-clock labor, the immensity of the undertaking came into perspective.

"It's like a massive assembly line," he said. "And weather is always going to mess things up. The buses will get stuck in the mud. There might be an evacuation. You can't complain about it. You keep going."

Walking down from his house this year, ticket in hand, he considered that other worst-case-scenario, currently spread out for miles on the horizon -- a situation that could soon put the "come hell or high water" attitude of festival organizers to the final test.

As the Mississippi River rises more than 5 feet above flood level, Tom Lee Park looks as if it might dip into the torrent. Friday night, police officers in a speed boat were able to hop out onto the grass and watch the sunset. Several times during the Flaming Lips' set, lead singer Wayne Coyne gazed philosophically toward Ol' Man River.

"Water, man," he said. "Water. Can you think of anything so perfect?"

In the Federal Building Downtown, Maj. Jon Korneliussen of the Corps of Engineers was in a far less metaphysical state of mind.

For one, the water was making him late to his first music festival since moving to Memphis last October. He and his wife had planned to see the band Cake.

Now Korneliussen was working overtime in the "war room," fielding calls from engineers watching the levees upriver for sand boils, or signs of erosion.

"If the river goes up 3 more feet, there's the possibility of waves lapping into the park," he said. "It'll be during Barbecue Fest when we start to see cresting."

Diane Hampton, executive vice president of Memphis in May, noted the bad luck of rising waters, "just when we get a sunny weekend."

For most of the day, the music festival was atypically dry. Good weather came with the strongest pre-sales of tickets in five years.

By May 10, the Mississippi is expected to reach 45 feet -- the highest it can go without starting to flood the park.

The decision to relocate Barbecue Fest will have to be made within the next few days, however.

Even if the river floods, Hampton says, the festival doesn't want to just turn its back and run for the hills.

"Memphis in May is about heritage," Hampton said. "The river has a certain ambience that makes this a world-class event. It's barbecue. It's music. It's the Mississippi. There's that appeal. If we have to move Barbecue Fest, where do we go? Should we stay Downtown? Move to the fairgrounds? We want to keep the river as a backdrop, but how?"

Outside Hampton's trailer, Jerry Lee Lewis was wrapping up his set with his classic tunes "Great Balls of Fire" and "Whole Lotta Shakin." Meteors and earthquakes, incidentally, are among the catastrophes not yet faced by festival organizers.

Hampton grins when asked what else Beale Street Music Festival needs to be ready for.

"Haven't you seen the billboards?" she asks.

She's referring to the apocalypse, which a large sign, put up by a church group near the entrance to the festival, declares will occur on May 21.

Hampton sighs, looking back at the water tables: "If only it coulda happened sooner."